1. Technical Field
The invention relates to a method for producing and/or packaging products, in particular cigarettes, in a production and/or packaging system in which at least one production unit of the system is fed packaging units from a lower packaging level, and the production unit packages said packaging units in associated packaging units from higher levels, such that the packaging units from the higher packaging level each comprise one or more packaging units from the lower packaging level.
2. Prior Art
It is becoming more and more important in the cigarette industry to allow for comprehensive retraceability of products (Track and Trace). In the future, for example, it may possibly be required by law that, for a certain commercially available cigarette pack, it may be required to give proof of the machines, times, materials, etc. involved in manufacturing said cigarette pack.
In addition, it may become necessary, if appropriate, to be able to indicate the specific packaging units from a higher packaging level in which said cigarette pack was packaged when it left the manufacturing facility. It is thus conceivable for it to be necessary to give proof of the cigarette multipack and/or the carton in which the pack was packaged and/or of the pallet on which it was shipped. The expression “to package”, within the context of the present application, is intended to mean any assignment of a packaging unit from a lower level to a packaging unit from a higher level. In this way, it is possible, for example, for “cartons” packaging units to be packaged in a “pallet” packaging unit, on which the cartons are positioned. The packaging unit from the higher level need not necessarily spatially enclose the packaging unit from the lower level, even in part.
In order to achieve the aforementioned aim, EP 1 459 988 A1 proposes that codings, each carrying information regarding the contents contained in the packaging units, should be applied to the packs of the packaging units from the individual packaging levels. These codings here each carry information regarding the smaller packaging units contained within the packaging units.
For this purpose, the codings of the packaging units from the lower level are read out in the production process before the packaging units are fed to that production unit that packages said packaging unit from the lower level in the associated packaging unit from the higher level. Accordingly, the read-out codings are included as information in the generation of codings that are then applied to the packaging units from the higher level. This creates an assignment between the packaging units from different levels.
The disadvantage here, inter alia, is the fact that, with the high process speeds in the packaging industry, the operations of reading out the codings and, in particular, of analyzing and/or processing the read-out codings to give the codings that are to be applied to the packaging units from higher levels can only be realized with great difficulty. In addition, it is necessary for the codings on the packaging units from a higher level, which carry the information regarding the packaging units from a lower level, to be applied to the packaging units while the production process is underway. It is not possible to prefabricate, for example, multipack blanks with coding already applied.